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Feb 28 2018

# London Grip New Poetry – Spring 2018

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This issue of London Grip New Poetry features poems by:

* M W Bewick *Frank Dullaghan *Anne Ballard *Mary Michaels *Sanjeev Sethi *Ray Miller
* Richard Lewis *Thomas McColl *Stephen Claughton *Phil Kirby * Stuart Pickford
*Heidi Williamson * Sarah James *Kate Noakes * Carol DeVaughn * Jim C Wilson
* P W Bridgman *Brian Docherty * Josh Ekroy *Jock Stein * John Kitchen
* William Oxley *Alwyn Marriage * Neil Curry * Danielle Hope * Peter Daniels
*Keith Nunes *Lauren Smith *Ruth Bidgood * Marilyn Hammick
*Myra Schneider *Shanta Acharya *Caroline Maldonado *Colin Crewdson

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors

Biographical notes on contributors can be found here

A printer-friendly version of London Grip New Poetry can be found at LG new poetry Spring 2018

London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December

Please send submissions (up to three poems plus a brief bio) to poetry@londongrip.co.uk
Poems should be either in one Word attachment or included in the message body

Our preferred submission windows are: December-January, March-April,
June-July and September-October

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    M W Bewick: Unsaid

    What I meant in my last poem
    was that I knew it would be cold as I waited for the train
    and that I was expecting to shiver. I mean
    so many things so unevenly,
    and my pacing never quells them, and my fingers
    search for pockets which, in a not-
    quite-warm-enough coat, are all
    sewn up. It is autumn, you see, and the sky
    is crossed with black ribbons and there is a nervousness
    at the corner where tied-up dogs turn
    circles by the shop and every hour is vital.
    The filament trees begin to glow
    and it feels more important that we lock our doors
    and take all the calls now in case we become
    distracted or if the wind picks up and a signal
    is lost. And so what I meant to say is that
    it’s okay if you’re not here for the bonfire because I’m
    not fond of them either. But just know that there is one
    should you want. Something smouldering, licking
    into light, or dark, or some other other.

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***

    Frank Dullaghan: No Use Blaming the Choices We Make on the Dead
    Dundalk 1973

    Your dead may travel with you but they don’t interfere.
    They had their chance to fuck up once. You should
    have yours. Only your grandmother, maybe, if you ask enough
    times, will listen. Mostly though, you get yourself out
    of your own messes and try not to let anyone know.
    When my first serious girlfriend left me after three teenage years
    of being the man, growing into the man, I wanted her back,
    I wanted her to get over the excitement of a boy with a motorbike.
    I wanted her to see where I was going with my books,
    my leave-this-town beliefs. When that Halloween party broke,
    in that sudden surprising way it always did, to play chase
    and kiss, she ran into the street in that scatter of girls,
    her new boyfriend out of town, and, as the girls peeled off,
    she took her own direction. Were the dead watching?
    I joined in the chase, following first the main group, then her
    best friend, who slowed into a wall shadow as I caught up,
    opened her arms to me, kissed me deeply, sweetly. And Mary,
    coming back to where the action was, slowed seeing us,
    then turned away as if she could hear the dead chuckling.
    Whatever chance I might have had was too gone by then
    even for a grandmother and her entourage to fix,

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***

    Anne Ballard: Bus Stop

    The local school
    has disgorged its seniors.
    They prowl, large and strident
    round the fried-chicken-takeaway.
    A fight hovers: no action
    but much swearing and shouting.
    A bike slumps on the pavement:
    its owner: He said my name man,
    I’m not fucking talking.
    The police are never far off,
    patrolling in twos.

    These kids, mostly, are harmless
    but very many, and loud
    so you tread egg-shells round them,
    feel intimidated near this stop
    where their pack leaders herd them.
    If you cross the road in avoidance
    they glower and mutter, shuffle
    like gathering predators.

    But today I walk through them,
    part them, brace myself
    to meet their eyes, thank them.
    They smile back and quieten
    as if relieved: one person at least
    hasn’t made them invisible.

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***

    Mary Michaels: Pleasantly Sunny
     after “Portrait with Parents #2” a short film by Guy Sherwin

    Mother and father in front of a mirror
    a wide mirror   on the mantelpiece behind them

    mother’s and father’s backs in the mirror

    beyond their backs
    a hand turning the crank of a camera
    a head occasionally
    lifting   then bending
    to look through the viewfinder

    Once   then again
    the father raises a small black Leica
    and neatly frames us viewers in a snap

    a man   after all   has to do something
    other than smile
    and look at the mother
    and remark on the weather

    which is pleasantly sunny
    judging from the light coming into the room
    brightening the side of his head
    and the cameraman’s shoulder-length hair
    from the left
    as the hand turns
    winding on   winding

    Lips move

    the lips of the son    of the father    of the mother
    with more smiles

    it would be impossible
    over the ticker ticker tick of the projector
    to hear what’s being said.

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***

    Sanjeev Sethi: November 21, 2017

    “Please let us pay,” entreats my dearest nephew’s
    significant other at the tony diner as the steward
    teeter-totters between us with the tab. The whirl-
    pools in her eyes draw me deeper and deeper
    into connections. Not known for a heart set in
    stone I acquiesce, wishing their togetherness
    the lasting tint of amaranthine grains.

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***

    Ray Miller: Back Foot Defensive

    He’d been a county cricketer,
    journeyman all-rounder.
    clothing always cut
    to a perfect line and length,
    except that time
    his wife was possessed
    of a pair of garden shears.

    Always on his guard,
    back foot defensive –
    I had to find out about him
    in his case-notes and Wisden.
    Each pre-season he was treated
    with a course of ECT,
    a means of punishing himself
    for the time he got caught out
    and those occasions since
    he’d edged between the slips.

    It was like going out to bat
    without gloves,
    pads, cap or box,
    when the opposition pacemen
    were pin-point, electric.

    Six treatments to a course
    and when it was all over,
    the long walk back
    from the crease to the pavilion.
    The vision slowly clearing
    to a spatter of applause,
    a pat on the shoulder,
    a memory that never
    will quite recover.

    His wife with a pencil
    and scorecard in hand.

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***

    Richard Lewis: Matchday

    ‘Mum’. It's a word I've never really known how to say.
    It feels foreign from my lips as if I am emptying
    a mouth full of rocks onto a wet beach.
    I'd try, now and again. But it would stall

    like my Dad's old Rover after it iced up overnight,
    and I'd watch from the kitchen window in my red scarf
    as he went to work with a measuring jug of boiling water
    from the kettle. Swearing as he looked at his watch.

    I'd watch the other kids use it without consequence,
    shout it with the matchday horns and plastic footballs
    bouncing past me down the street. They'd use it to ask
    for change, discs of 50ps for cans of off brand cola

    and stickers for their football albums. Searching for shinies
    of club crests like Charlie Bucket. Pleading for one more hour
    to kick tennis balls against the wall with their replica shirts
    hanging loose and unfilled before bathtime and bed.

    That word. 'Mum’; When I approached
    its boundaries barbed wires would shoot up
    over my dad's eyes under the war of his cracked face.
    Do not enter. Danger ahead. Cracking save, son.

    It is a word that is mine, and I keep it for when I am alone,
    explore it cautiously, release it into my empty room
    as if it were an addiction; watch it create
    memories I could not possibly have out of

    the drug motions of its smoke; wonder what
    it would be like to have it reach its destination,
    to turn at the final whistle, in the thrill of victory,
    and plead for one more hour in the sun.

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***

    Thomas McColl: Pearl

    On the bus, mum opened up the shell
    she held in her hand
    as if hoping to find a pearl,
    but, being just a compact,
    the shell contained instead a mirror
    which, when she held it up close to her face,
    displayed one eye – a pearl of perception –
    that she now proceeded to fence off with kohl.

    I always knew, as soon as she put make-up on,
    that pearl was no longer mine but someone else’s.
    In just a few minutes, we’d arrive at the usual address.
    Ah well, a few more minutes with mum on the bus
    (even if she’d already gone on ahead in spirit).
    She had in her hand her kohl pen
    and I had in my hand my felt-tip pen
    and, on my lap, a pile of pocket war comic books
    (I knew that if mum bought me
    anything more than the usual barest ration of treats
    there’d have to be a trade-off).

    Today, it meant being banished to that damp-filled room
    with the woodworm-ridden wardrobe,
    as pockmarked as the dartboard attached to it.
    But even if life round here was grim,
    it was nowhere near as grim
    as it was for the soldiers in my comics
    who, having all died just thirty years before,
    and having now been forcibly reanimated
    with cold and clinical jet-black ink,
    were once again being massacred –
    with hot and furious orange ink.

    And I didn’t give a Gott in Himmel
    that I was directing felt-tipped fire
    as much into the hearts of Tommies as Jerries.
    I just wanted to kill all men
    (or kill at least as many as I could)
    in the hours I spent going mad in that room,
    in front of a wounded wardrobe –
    peppered with pockmarks
    (comic-book-sized bullet holes) –
    my mind now as infected
    and damaged as the wood.

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***

    Stephen Claughton: Your Funeral

    She was funny about funerals,
    had Dad shuffled off
    with the minimum of fuss,
    after his heart-attack,

    then refused to attend her sister’s
    (Scotland being too far),
    despite all those lectures we had
    about keeping the family close.

    She must have been haunted
    by something more than death
    to have tried to dodge her own
    by leaving her body to science.

    It’s your funeral, we joked,
    forgetting they’re for the bereaved
    and it’s we who’d be left in limbo,
    until they released the remains.

    When, in the end, the hospital
    wouldn’t take her
    (no point with dementia, they said:
    the brain doesn’t make any sense),

    we did the best we could
    to let her have the last word,
    arranging a simple send-off:
    no clergy, no eulogy, no wake,

    just our own choice of music and readings
    and only the family there
    to witness that glitch at the close,
    which I know she would have hated,

    when “Nimrod” played on a loop
    kept everyone in their seats,
    only stopping when I stood up —
    like a game of un-musical chairs.

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***

    Phil Kirby: Undersong

    We walk in open land
    that someone chose to call
    a park, which falls towards
    where once a railway ran.

    Your mother gone in March,
    our idle conversation
    falters, lets in spaces
    which suddenly are filled

    with birds, their endless songs,
    as if to herald Spring.
    We wonder that the sound
    becomes so strong and loud

    when the throat is so small,
    the body weighing nothing;
    and that the echo carries on
    so far into the distance.

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***

    Stuart Pickford: Flying Visit

    We scrat about in nettles,
    the pickings small and dull.
    The tree had given up its nuts,
    open husks like hands saying,
    Where have you two been?

    Well, there was the funeral
    followed by your silly stroke.
    But here you are telling me
    to throw a stick to get them.
    Your carrier’s thin as mine.

    We drift along the field’s edge.
    Our next tree offers its fruit
    from shells split in readiness;
    And just a few feet, you note.
    We pinch out glossy threes.

    Our palms brag the fattest.
    Bags have put on weight.
    You slip your arm through mine
    to head back to the bungalow,
    our way dotted by a robin.

    Driving north, I vow this time
    to spend an hour on a recipe
    for your next visit at Christmas;
    my fingers tingling on the wheel,
    barbs pricking under the skin.

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    Heidi Williamson: Take place
    “our fleeting lives do not simply ‘happen’
     and vanish – they take place”                Jane Hirshfield

    When we left, we left it all:
    the surface, the current, the stalling clouds.

    When we left we took it all:
    the touch of each droplet from first to last.

    When we left, we left it all:
    the hazel, the spruce, the Scots pine, the aspen.

    When we left we took it all:
    skyscapes and treescapes that frame the season.

    When we left, we left it all:
    the bracken, the cabins, the pathways of water.

    When we left, we took it all:
    the hollows, chill soil, ice air and snowfall.

    When we left, we left it all:
    angular boulders with ashy thin grasses.

    When we left we took it all:
    the scent of just-rained-on expanding the stonework.

    When we left, we left it all:
    pine martins, red deer, herons and osprey.

    When we left, we took it all:
    shell-shapes of supple islands of shingle.

    When we left, we left it all:
    the mirror of shadows, fern fronds on hillsides.

    When we left we took it all:
    the bend in the loch we can’t see beyond.

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    Sarah James: Our Street

                    (i)
    No. 8 is left parcels.
    No. 20, two figures gazing
    from an upstairs window.

    Opposite, tabby cat and green Fiesta.
    I think it’s the postman who whistles
    Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah every morning.

    A ghost plays Paradise late at night.
    Sometimes, shopping in Morrisons,
    I almost recognise faces.

                               (ii)
    I sleep through the morning whistle,
    wake to blue lights and a siren.
    No. 20: shapes at the window downstairs.

    Much later, the same silhouettes
    walking through a blood-orange sky,
    to knock opposite.

    Other cars clustered
    by the tabby cat’s drive.

                                   (iii)
    Our glances meet, as she picks a fish pie
    from the supermarket’s chill cabinet.
    I recognise her pain, then her face.

    Jean prefers homemade but sharing
    with the cat is not the same
    as sharing was with Alan.

    Perhaps, she ventures, I might like
    to come over for tea and cake?
    I nod. Wedges of dislodged ice

    fall from the cabinet door,
    even as it closes.

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***

    Kate Noakes: Being someone’s cherie

    Once lost, long held, longed for
    unattainable, the thing about being
    someone’s cherie is that most people
    never discover they are someone’s cherie

    secreted by their old love
    in the ash of unrealized ambitions
    to cross Russia by train, run marathons, fly

    but for those of us cheries who do
    the rekindling’s all consuming.

    We burn, are more aflame than we could
    ever tinder. Being someone’s cherie
    has no room for a cool centre. It’s a sizzle
    a sear right to the heart, no tenderizing
    in this blaze, no marinade to this fire.

    It’s a flash fry right onto the plate
    and I am ravenous, so this someone’s cherie
    I surprise myself.

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***

    Kate Noakes: How to ward off the sky

    have the crows scream at thunder
    a caw is a caw is a caw, rolling

    let the seagulls wheel before shelter
    white flash, a squawk in the blue black

    leave my burnt face at the window
    fat rain, my tears lost, cooling

    a cry is a cry is

    bring wood pigeon calling dawn again
    a coo, soothing

    and the blackbird to chorus clean air
    a trill is a trill is a thrill.

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***

    Carol DeVaughn: London Fields with Crows

    A silent canopy of black overhead –
    the sudden crows eclipse the noonday sun,
    bring a rush of twilight, neither dawn
    nor dusk, an atmosphere of first causes.

    I stare at the crows, hear someone piping:
    Yes, they live here, high up,
    build their nests from twigs,
    moss, scraps of cloth.

    He goes on: filial piety, mating for life.
    His words begin to veer, stagger, knock
    against the air, looking for a place to hide,
    not wanting to be spoken.

    The crows hover, draw me into their world
    where watching and listening take over:

              I picture van Gogh in Auvers
                                   not long before he died
              his wheatfield with crows
                              their flight path haphazard
              though his field of wheat shines
                    his sky swirls light and dark blue
              his green path feels innocent, untried.

              Perhaps in that field, sixty feet up,
              there’s part of a shirt, bits of straw hat,
              a broken paintbrush …

    Suddenly the canopy of black splits open –
    light streaks the fabric as the crows
    fly up, leaving absences of themselves,
    breaking their silence.

    I can’t tell which came first:
    the streaks of light or their caws;
    and which I prefer:
    the silent murder with its mystery

    or thoughts of a treetop home for socks
    that have walked miles, slept rough;
    torn scarves, threadbare gloves
    for all ages, persuasions – lost and found.

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***

    Jim C Wilson: The Dry Hibiscus

    Remembering how a kiss needed courage,
    the Spanish gardener rose at dawn, before
    the mountain tops were rimmed with sun. He loved
    to tend the flowers when moss-cool shadow
    reached out from the cypresses. Remembering
    the first brief touch of fingers (and was it
    accidental?) the Spanish gardener set
    to work: water for the dry hibiscus,
    its petals curling, red as blood. He found
    it easier to toil than think, but could
    not help but pluck one bloom, recalling how
    the garden shone beneath an April moon.
    Late afternoon, the red looked more like rust;
    an evening wind blew dust in from the fields.

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***

    P W Bridgman: Lych Gate And Yews: A Tableau Vivant

    You’ll often see ’em ’uddled in rows,
    leading to t’entrances of country churches,
    or lych gates. Yew trees, I mean.

    This factoid lands unbidden today as, indeed,
    do so many on their weekly outings.

    She’s the boys’ maiden great-auntie from Cleckheaton,
    West Yorks. Olivia. Olivia Irene Thwaites. Or,
    “Auntie Olivia Oblivia” as they sometimes call her.
    Bloody hell. Something boring’s always tumbling out.
    She can’t remember their names from Sunday to Sunday,
    but she knows two dozen George Formby songs by heart.

    If you could see what I can see,
    When I’m cleanin’ windas …

    It’s such a bother. They slump, every week-end,
    into the back seat of their dad’s Renault Clio,
    their scowls clouding the stuffy air inside
    as they drive, yet again, to the home
    to pick her up. (Auntie Olivia Oblivia was placed
    in Gloucestershire so there would be family nearby.)

    The boys wonder: What kind of a home has a “the”?
    Not theirs, that’s certain.

    These are mean boys.

    “Here it comes,” one says to the other,
    “Total eclipse of the sun.”
    With a carer’s assistance, and dressed as always
    in the same tracksuit and trainers, she manoeuvres
    her enormous pink behind into the front seat
    next to their dad, squealing like a gigantic, bathed
    and powdered sow:

    Ooooo! Off we go! Isn’t this just grand?

    Their dad looks over his shoulder at them,
    gives them that don’t-you-dare-say-it look.
    Their eyes roll and cross, starved of screen.

    As they trace scenic B-roads in the Clio,
    passing through Chipping Campden and onward,
    past Stow-on-the-Wold, past Guiting Power,
    more factoids are offered up:

    Pagans started it. The Christians took it up.
    Keep cattle from wandering into the church,
    they do, those yews. Evidently.

    “Mm-hmm,” her nephew, the boys’ father, hums.
    Still nodding, he glances at his watch, gears
    down, then accelerates through another roundabout.

    They don’t like yews, them cattle. Evidently.

    “Fascinating,” their dad answers, endlessly patient,
    endlessly enthusiastic. “I’ll guess you didn’t know that before,
    did you, boys?”  No response.

    Then, some miles on, he spots something.
    The Vauxhall pulls over sharply, rolling to a halt
    on a verge in Painswick, in New Street in fact,
    near the entrance to the pathway through the churchyard.

    The Church of St. Mary the Virgin presides in stately dominion
    over the churchyard’s expansive green lawns, the stern,
    admonitory forefinger of its spire pointing heavenward.
    One of its several surrounding yewy colonnades can be seen
    to frame the lych gate from where they have halted.

    “Shall we wander in and have a look?” their dad asks,
    turning to Auntie Olivia Oblivia and unfastening his seatbelt.

    Oh no! I should never have brought it up!

    She says it in a panicky voice, her face
    crumpling unexpectedly into uncontrollable sobbing.

    “What is it, Auntie?” their dad asks, bewildered and helpless.
    There is no consoling her. Her eyes and nose are running freely,
    her words now unintelligible, folded irretrievably into
    the dark mystery of her grieving.

    The mean boys worry in the back seat:
    Did she hear what they’d been saying?
    Their own chins begin to tremble.

    In time she settles, at least a bit. The big sofa cushion
    that is her bosom heaves a little less, her breathing
    becomes more regular. There is no more
    kibitzing in the back seat. The boys’ dad, stricken,
    rubs Olivia’s back, hands her more tissues.

    At last she squeaks out something discernible
    between the nose-blows and the fresh sobs—
    something about when she was a schoolgirl in Pontefract,
    something about mean girls and relentless teasing.

    She gets more out, between big sighs and more sobs—
    about being condemned by her weight never to marry.

    She continues, haltingly, about the teasing,
    about schoolgirls saying that yew trees
    have been planted in churchyards all over England,
    for centuries, to keep cows like her
    well clear of the altar
    and, thus, of the marriage bed.
    Her sobbing returns,
    but quietly.

    And in the rear seat of the Vauxhall, everything has
    gone a watery white. The boys’ burning eyes are filled
    with salt (of their own bodies’ manufacture, evidently).

    Still, and at long last:

    They can see what she can see,
    When she’s cleanin’ windas …

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***

    Brian Docherty: Serenity
    after John Nash, Window Plants

    Kim could act better than most of the muppets
    in Soapland, a magnet for weak foolish men
    like my Nigel; I was more hurt by her deceit
    till I knew how to deal with the pair of them.

    You know what I mean, don’t you Tiger.
    Sometime you can let things go, warn people
    off, sometimes scratch them a bit, or a lot,
    sometimes you just have to fight to a finish.

    Why do you think my plants grow so tall?
    Not just because you fertilise them, Tiger,
    but because of the soil, and all its nutrients.
    The old story about graves & roses is true.

    But I’ve never liked roses, even as presents,
    not even when I was young and beautiful.
    I am still beautiful on the inside, but also
    serene, because I have only one secret,

    and that is displayed for all the world to see,
    even the vulgarly curious, who look in, notice
    only an old woman, her cat and her canary,
    never wonder why my pot plants are so red.

    My geraniums are 40 years old, still vigorous,
    they might outlive me, and you as well Tiger;
    the police & Insurance man pried and poked,
    those cheating hearts right under their noses.

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***

    Brian Docherty: Resident Alien

    This morning (your time) I woke up in Rio.
    I don’t recall flying down here, or how
    I made friends with the python in the bath,
    who gave me the bucket of live crabs,
    why I was reading a script for EastEnders
    before I fell asleep clutching my teddy bear.

    I know, I’m 400 years old, but I’ve had Bruno
    since 1903, he’s been everywhere with me.
    I’ve got friends and family back home,
    but I can’t go back, now that I’ve got used
    to this form. I don’t mind being a biped now,
    I’ve almost got the walk & talky right.

    I think I was auditioning for a Soap part,
    I like Brazilian TV, will never do a British Soap
    again, & I’m taking a long rest from Hollywood.
    I played myself in six Alien Invasion movies,
    my family got so upset, made me apologise
    for the silly dialogue. Me, I got paid for it.

    I live in Malibu, hang out in Venice Beach,
    I swear I could stroll down the boardwalk,
    nobody would notice if I went out as myself,
    but I prefer to get paid for anything I do,
    and yes, you’ve seen me in lots of things,
    and I’ve got Oscars going back to 1930.

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***

    Josh Ekroy: this piece of planet earth

    will fly to the moon
    just as the moon did eons ago

    I have said repeatedly
    that since it is I
    who initiated this process
    should we resolve
    to heave ourselves into the heavens
    I would guide us through the stratosphere
    from here to there
    to our final destination

    however I have worked night and day
    heart and soul to keep us
    grounded and earthed here
    in the cold healthy waters
    of this planet whose course
    cannot fundamentally be altered
    or diverted from its passage
    round the sun

    but I now discover that I suffer
    from a rare form of travel-sickness
    which renders movement
    of any kind impossible
    much less the navigation
    through unnumbered stars

    I am minded that it now should fall
    to someone else more suited
    to this enterprise
    however much I might wish
    to zoom us through the ozone layer
    and into outer space alas

    it is with deep regret
    that I have to inform you
    that I shall remain
    in this vacuum
    where I intend to evolve
    into a new moonless species
    more adaptable perhaps
    and because of this small setback
    more self-reliant
    ready at last to make the leap
    onto a mineral-rich meteorite

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***

    Josh Ekroy: Question Time

    Why is it taking so long to fly to the moon?

    The reason is clear it is because the flat-earthers
    are for ever making difficulties
    the moon bill is thwarted on every side
    by moaning anti-mooners who claim that they are merely
    asking questions about what sort of time capsule
    we should travel in when in fact they have a secret agenda
    which is to keep us gravity-bound indefinitely
                                     *
    The reason is that flying to the moon
    is a more complicated business than the mooners
    would like you to believe
    first of all not a time capsule but a rocket
    capable of accommodating sixty million people
    has to be constructed somehow but inevitably
    there will be a time and budget overrun
                                     *
    The reason is that there are many many different
    ways of travelling to the moon
    It is simply a question of finding the best way
    and no no no
    let me also say this let me also say
    thirty megaspaceships could be built
    each with a capacity of two million people
    or sixty bucketships transporting one million each
    or one hundred and twenty superlightships carrying half a million
    and so on the details could all be worked out
                                    *
    The reason it is taking so long is because
    the moon is made from a sticky substance
    not unlike like honey which when landed upon
    would cause people to become rooted to the spot
    now some may say that since there is little or no gravity
    on the moon then this is a good thing
    but I wonder about that and I think it is this tension
    between adhesion and free flight
    that has given the chief moonie a bit of a headache
                                    *
    The chief moonie long may she continue in office
    believes that flying to the moon
    means flying to the moon

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***

    Jock Stein: Driving Mr Albert
    The journalist Michael Paterniti in 1997 went from New Jersey to California with Einstein’s brain

     in a grey duffel bag, along with the 84 year old pathologist who removed his brain in 1955 and

    kept at his home for over 40 years, in order to present the brain to Einstein’s grand-daughter Evelyn.

    In his account of the journey, he imagined the great man in the car beside him

    I am going to visit her:                                         a Scot would put it so,
    relatively speaking,                                               relatively speaking,
    she is my grand-daughter.                                  ‘Mebbes aye, mebbes no!’

    Michael wrote me into this.                                while a Jewish rebbe’d hope
    Relatively speaking,                                               relatively speaking
    I am a parenthesis.                                                that a story’d help you cope

    Where does ‘this’ translate?                               with every difficult subject.
    Relatively speaking,                                               Relatively speaking,
    Planet Earth, US Interstate,                                 I have a worry with this project:

    velocity of travel slight,                                         what about poor Evelyn?
    relatively speaking                                                 Relatively speaking,
    to the speed of light.                                             that’s still a question mark within

    And who am I, ask you?                                        the author’s brain; after all,
    Relatively speaking,                                               relatively speaking
    that is a complex issue,                                         life’s uncertain. You can call

    about philosophy. We’re                                      position or momentum,
    relatively speaking,                                                relatively speaking,
    only my brain is really here.                                 but with persons, better shtum

    Am I more than just my brain?                            In fact, her sanity to save,
    Relatively speaking,                                                relatively speaking,
    once I was, but then again                                    I’ll just give a gravitational wave.

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***

    John Kitchen: I tell myself

    we are small soft things in a world
    full of fire & hardness & if you’re scared
    distracted, bored, ecstatic
    the bullet hits you all the same

    our lips were full of mischief
    and each other
    too long that had been enough
    we still hadn’t learned that fate

    couldn’t care less about anyone
    certainly in many
    of the multiple universes
    it would’ve all worked out

    but           time  stalls      words
    disintegrate so I may as well
    be ruthless accept it my dear we’re both
    as helpless as newborns

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***

    John Kitchen: were I ….

    he would never be
    and she probably wouldn’t be either
    but in her case the alternatives weren’t great
    and now they seem considerably worse
     of course we would never have gone the way we did
    and even if we had we wouldn’t have made
     such a pig’s ear or do I mean dog’s breakfast
     and like them I get so hung up on the money
     though the sums are too great to have meaning
     the sky after all is a big responsibility
     and doesn’t everyone deserve
     but
     it just goes on
     division   dogma    obsession
     and they all seem so certain when they talk
     of it being simple            well
     they would wouldn’t they
     but       not if I were

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***

    William Oxley: The Surrealism Of Everyday Living

    The man next to me is thinking about living.
    I am ? ditto – though it's raining buckets.
    He knows, as I know, `thinking about living'
    is the only certain thing he too accepts
    about me sitting on this sullen bench.
    We neighbour one another in mutual ignorance:
    he thinks I could be German or French
    I that his name is `Len' or 'Terence'.
    Until he speaks we share nothing at all
    only the pride of our unimportant thoughts:
    he thinking how heavy is the rain's fall
    I that it would be useful for water-sports.
    But when he rises tall as the sky
    and opens a golfing brolly and sighs
    I suspect he is living some sort of a lie,
    but because of it he will continue to surprise
    and only cease to be when the mad onion
    in every head is entirely peeled so that
    it will never again rain for anyone:
    not `stair-rods', `buckets' or `cats and dogs',
    and thinking about living will make more sense
    with its only idioms the idioms of silence.

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***

    Alwyn Marriage: Implicit

    When an enthusiastic fan asked Eliot if in writing part
    of the Four Quartets he meant what this reader thought,
    the great man shrugged and replied, ‘I didn’t, but do now’.

    The French poet, Paul Verlaine, claimed to prefer
    the vague to the specific in his poetry – l’Impair,
    plus vague et plus soluble dans l’air.

    No one demands to know what the violin
    was saying in its glorious exuberance of notes,
    – or even the composer, come to that.

    So if someone asks me to interpret
    a slightly opaque passage in a poem
    I’ve written, I generally reply:

    If I could have said it any other way
    there would have been no need
    to write the poem.

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***

    Neil Curry: A Poetry Workshop – Grasmere

    OK.  Let’s see what we’ve got here.

                     She dwelt among th’untrodden ways
                          Beside the springs of Dove:
                     A maid whom there were none to praise
                          And very few to love.

                   A violet by a mossy stone
                        Half-hidden from the eye!
                   Fair as a star when only one
                        Is shining in the sky!

                   She lived unknown, and few could know
                        When Lucy ceased to be;
                   But she is in her grave, and oh,
                        The difference to me!

    Now maybe it’s just me, but I do have a little problem with those plurals in your first two lines.

    How is it that there were so many “ways” where she lived, particularly if, as you say, they were

    “untrodden”?  I don’t quite get that.  I don’t see it.  And again, you have “springs”. But surely a

    river only has one spring, doesn’t it?  Yes? By the way, I’ve never heard of a River Dove round

    here.  There’s one that flows into the Trent, but… You didn’t just call it that to rhyme with “love”

    did you?   No, well, if you say so…

    But, more important than that, I am really puzzled by the logic of your next two lines.  You see,

    if there is nobody to praise her, where are these people who love her coming from – even if there

    are only a few of them?   You see what I mean?

    I like the imagery in verse two - very striking.  I like the way “half-hidden” follows on from the

    “untrodden”.  A half-hidden half-rhyme?  But this star.  If there is only one up there, then it’s

    going to be a bit conspicuous,  isn’t it?  You can’t have it both ways; you’re going to have to

    choose.

    Now in line 9, you’ve repeated that word “few”, and we have the same problem that we had in

    verse one.  If she is “unknown”, how can these “few” know about her?  Are they the same “few”

    that cropped up earlier?   I do find it rather confusing.

    I see you have named her.  Lucy.  Did you know this girl then?  No, of course, you are quite right:

    none of my business.  But in that last line, don’t you think. Mr Wordsworth, that you might be

    being just a tad egotistical?  You are clearly upset by this, but she’s dead.  I mean, she’s in her

    grave.  That’s quite a difference for her.

    Now again, this may just be me, but do you really need that exclamation mark at the end?  And

    I’ve just noticed, you’ve already got two others.  We could maybe do without them?  What do

    you think?

    Well, perhaps you’d like to bring this back next week, when you’ve had a chance to look at some

    of the little  issues we’ve met up with here.

     Ok?  Great. No problem.

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***

    Danielle Hope: Muddlestop
    for Not-Work Rail

    Yes. I remember in the chill of January –
    Boarding at Blackfriars to journey
    Two stations south on the morning train –
    I stood unwontedly all the way.

    The intercom hissed as the train paused.
    We thumped yellow buttons. But no door
    Opened onto the glum platform. What I saw
    was Herne Hill – only the name

    And people inside pounded Driver Let Us Out.
    No response came. A baby wept then
    An old man wailed Oh God I don’t want
    To end in Sutton. The train already late,

    Crept on in a new stop-skipping pattern
    about which sly Thameslink warned no-one
    trapped within, all doomed to travel farther
    And farther towards Merton and Wimbledon.

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***

    Danielle Hope: Moving escalator, King’s Cross

    The escalator tosses us up into
    the basin of the ticket hall
    and on through barriers

    we have time so we join the small
    crowd standing silently
    at the plaque

    where lost tourists and commuters
    jostle by spilling
    coffee

    and free brochures and other
    November scraps bluster
    about our feet

    you press my left hand
    murmur how lucky
    we are

    then the tannoy stutters about
    a good service on all lines
    except for Piccadilly

    and you wonder when it will
    be the right time
    to tell me.

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***

    Peter Daniels: Answers

    I’ll tell you what happened, shall I? You lost
    your ring at King’s Cross, in the canal. A fish
    found it and swallowed it, I caught the fish
    and now it’s time to cook and eat it, but you
    won’t believe me when I show you the answer.

    Man on the train has lost his cherry from off of
    his Belgian bun from Gregg’s, it’s on the floor
    and he hasn’t even noticed. I’m not going to
    tell him, “Ha ha, you’ve lost your cherry”: what
    would be the point, as he can’t eat it anyway.

    I have nothing to tell you, now you’ve lost your
    way, no special treat, nothing you could swallow:
    nothing will come of nothing and why would it,
    it’s never a good time for truth now the gilt
    is off the gingerbread, no one wants to know.

    We get to King’s Cross another time: I could tell you
    where you need to go, but it’s all so confusing
    and you can’t get anywhere without having to
    ask all over again, though you’ll be too proud
    to ask, like most lost men, who won’t be told.

    Your lost cherries and unvarnished gingerbread might
    have been the answer you didn’t want to ask for
    but you want the answer you want, not to be shown
    what’s the truth. You dropped your ring and now
    the fish can’t even be bothered to swallow it for you.

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***

    Keith Nunes: A night of some darkness

    the night is dark enough to get lost in
    the stars aren’t interested
    in this scrounger of a city
    sat between ice-cream peaks and sandpaper beach

    my boot heels are in a loop of echo
    bouncing off flat-faced lifeless office blocks

    across the redundant convex road
    a beret rides on a lanky bent ladder of a man
    striding like Albert Camus
    cigarette blazing
    pocketed hands
    suited
    to wearing the 1950s on his frame

    I halt at a four-way junction
                                                  tucked in the corner of a cross
                                                   laid down
                                                  waiting to be picked up and carried the distance

    the turbaned taxi driver’s smile
    draws me over
                               inside
                               the dark is nowhere to be seen

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***

    Lauren Smith: He likes to tell me…

    my calves are not quite toned enough
    and should taper to a slender ankle
    with a delicate arched foot
    but
    I can run still

    my personal bests are celebrated
    with ‘next time’ and ‘if you had’
    reminding me the sun will only shine
    if I try harder

    when I was 15 years old I learned that
    I could get surgery on my ears
    but mum loved the way they stuck out
    so I kept them

    mum is self-conscious of
    the tim tam biscuits on her hips
    she didn’t see it before but now she knows

    my partner kisses the dimples on my thighs
    and says the gap between my teeth
    looks adorable on me
    I didn’t see it before but now I know

    I used to listen to the words written about me
    but now I write them
    control is a powerful thing

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***

    Ruth Bidgood: Losers

    Glass emptying again, enjoy your fiction —
    at least you know what should have been the truth.
    Yearning achieved the golden transmutation
    we wink at now, of all those well-tipped losers
    that, seen refracted in the beer, spank in
    first past the post, the way they should have done.

    Like towering carnival giants, your fantasies
    Imply some pattern that life could not match.
    Stepping from chatter and dazzle into night
    and glancing back at you, I sigh, not smile.
    My alchemy too has worked on tawdry fact;
    behind  your silly boasts the pain is mine.

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***

    Ruth Bidgood: Death of an Ant

    So, brother ant, I have your death
    in my hand..’Quick acting’,
    says the ant-powder. I hope that’s true.
    I have no instinctive dislike
    of your small glossy frame,
    your purposeful  scuttling.
    I can hardly call you
    an undesirable alien. I’m aware
    of much we could learn
    from you and yours – your worthy
    social life, its organised
    complexity, deep dedication
    to the common good, endless
    hard work . Perhaps if you came
    with just a small band, we could
    co-exist.  But there’s  the rub.
    Below these tiles, with their chink,
    their hardly visible exit
    into my hall, your compatriots
    pullulate.  I maintain that this
    is my house, my space, my land.
    There are too many of you!
    So, little brother, and  all of your ilk,
    farewell....

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***

    Marilyn Hammick: Moth

    Overnight it was so warm my skin
    sought the touch of every, any shift in the air.

    The lights were out, the radio glowing dimly
    at 03 20 when I woke, not because the puppy whined,

    or someone pulled the bathroom light switch,
    or a small hours driver passed my open window,

    I woke to the sound of a moth flying,
    not a flitty dusky moth that dissolves at a touch,

    or a middle sized black and white winged night flyer,
    somewhere in the dark, settling, flying, settling.

    Flying around my room was a palm-sized moth
    that rested on the sheet and spread its wings,

    their edges the colour of dust and closer in,
    hugging its body, patterned, bright, beautiful,

    and there I was, still and searching
    for ways to rescue both of us.

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***

    Myra Schneider: Deer

    Day or night they reappear from nowhere,
    the to and fro of their distress an echo of mine
    when panic rushes upon me and each time
    I question, as I did then, how someone
    who’d dreamt up gardens with mango trees,
    myrtles and herbs from all over the world,
    could believe captive deer would enhance
    such an Eden. Their fleet movements belong
    to the wilds of hills where they can run unseen,
    their stillness to privacies in woods, their mystery
    to forests dense with dark where any human
    glimpsing a head bearing stately branches,
    eyes which are softly-lit lamps, would sense
    the animal innerness Artemis revered.

    Yet there they were inside a wire enclosure,
    huddled among spindly trunks with nowhere
    to hide from children’s squawks or prying adults,
    jerking again and again into flight, shock
    shrieking from eyes as they raced from end to end
    of the world that caged them. That was years ago
    but I can still feel the pulse of their terror.

    And isn’t this the fear which drives people who live
    in places where each moment’s weighty
    with threat, to rip themselves from their homes,
    risk their lives in frail boats and trudge
    through dusty miles of languages whose jabber
    they can’t understand, clinging to the hope
    of a life which won’t cage them in dread?

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***

    Shanta Acharya: No Land, No Home
    with acknowledgement to Mahmoud Darwish

    Those who have no land, no home,
    washed in like debris on a beach, imagine

    not a painted ceiling, but a sky promising
    nothing, not even the company of clouds.

    Those who have no home, no land
    expect no ceremony, seek refuge in exchange

    for all we own – dreams sealed in our hearts,
    names of loved ones dissolving under the tongue.

    Those who have no land, no home
    have no hope that glimmers, no heaven

    that illuminates – only the freedom
    to die from longing and exile.

    Those who have no home, no land
    tossed between unknowns, transformed

    into stone, continue to believe in miracles,
    trusting the universe to take us home.

    Those who have no land, no home
    know what it means to be effaced –

    shorn of a self, turned into ghosts.
    Emptiness expands to fill our days.

    Only the wind listens to our secrets,
    chatters at the edge of shivering coasts.

    How can we thank the wind for revealing
    the truth to the trees, sky and seas –

    a home, a home, a life for a home –
    crying out for those who have no home?

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***

    Caroline Maldonado: Emanuel

    His name was Emanuel: God is with us.
    When Boko Haram trashed their home

    and hacked their child to pieces
    he and Chinyery packed up their pain

    with their possessions and put one
    hope before the other to Libya

    across the sea to Lampedusa, to Fermo
    where a Catholic mission took them in.

    Monkey was the mugger’s cry, a metal post
    his weapon. Chinyeri gathers her friends

    around her and sings. Her voice comes from
    who knows where and goes to some other place.

    She will wash her man's body ready for burial.
    She will drink the water she washed him in.

    July 2016

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***

    Colin Crewdson: Fisherman

    1.  Bait

    On the blackness of night
    a voice scribbles its graffiti,
    just a name this time:

    his tomb is empty of course,
    but inventions lie scattered in the dust,
    in the sneer of history.

    He lowers his line over the harbour wall
    hooks shiny with lures:
    boats noisy with inconsequence draw near,

    the fish don’t bite.
    He tries bread. Give me the right hook
    and I could catch these boats, he thinks.

    2.   Archimedes’ hook

    He consults the four winds
    and the gentle see-through waves,
    drops his line over the wall

    into the sea where the lures
    flash like fish and his hunger
    growls back at him.

    The sea walls, plump buttocks in their echoing
    bath, are slippery with noise;
    he reels in slowly as the catch struggles,

    falls off the hook, a commotion
    as the wooden hull rends, flailing oars,
    missiles, curses

    as the soldiers spin down
    in their shiny war gear,
    flashing like fish in the swirl.

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Shanta Acharya, an internationally published poet, critic, reviewer, scholar is the author of eleven books; her latest is Imagine: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins, India; 2017). www.shantaacharya.com

Anne Ballard lives in Edinburgh. Her poems have appeared in Acumen, Magma, The Interpreter’s House and elsewhere. She won first prize in the Poetry on the Lake Competition 2015. Her pamphlet Family Division was published by in 2015.

MW Bewick‘s first poetry collection, Scarecrow, was published in 2017. He lives in Essex, helps to run Poetry Wivenhoe, and is a co-founder of Dunlin Press.

Ruth Bidgood lives in Powys. Her most recent collection is the double-ended Land-Music/Black Mountains, which includes an essay by Matthew Jarvis.

P.W. Bridgman writes poetry and short fiction from Vancouver, Canada. His work hasb een published in The Honest Ulsterman, The Glasgow Review of Books, Ars Medica,The Moth Magazine, Poetry Salzburg Review, Litro UK, Litro NY, Praxis, PiF Magazine, Grain, Ascent Aspirations, The Antigonish Review, The New Orphic Review,Easy Street, London Grip, A New Ulster, Section 8 Magazine, Mulberry Fork Review, Aerodrome and other literary periodicals and e-zines. You may learn more about P.W.Bridgman by visiting his website at www.pwbridgman.ca.

Stephen Claughton’s poems have previously appeared in London Grip and other magazines, in print and on line, including Agenda, The Interpreter’s House, Magma, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Poetry Shed and The Warwick Review.

Colin Crewdson lives in Devon; his poems tend to reflect his visits to other countries.

Neil Curry‘s most recent collection Some Letters Never Sent was published by Enitharmon Press.

Peter Daniels has two poetry collections, Counting Eggs (Mulfran Press, 2012) and A Season in Eden (Gatehouse Press, 2016). His translations of Vladislav Khodasevich from Russian appeared from Angel Classics in 2013.

Carol DeVaughn is an American-born poet who has made London her home for many years. Her work has won several prizes, including a Bridport in 2012, and is published in magazines and on-line.

Brian Docherty lives on the Sussex coast as part of a growing community of writers, artists & musicians. His most recent books are In My Dreams, Again (Penniless Press, 2017) and Only In St. Leonards:A Year On The Marina (Special Sorts Press, 2017).

Previously the editor of Seam and co-founder of the Essex Poetry Festival, Frank Dullaghan now lives in Dubai. He was commissioned to provide the final translations (from literal ones) for the Arabic poems of HH Sheikh Mohammed, ruler of Dubai and PM of UAE. These poems were published in a bilingual book, Flashes of Verse’ in 2014. His 4th collection Lifting the Latch will be published by Cinnamon Press in May 2018 and will include this poem.

Josh Ekroy’s collection Ways to Build a Roadblock is published by Nine Arches Press. His poems have appeared in The Forward Anthology and the Best of British Poetry (Salt).

Marilyn Hammick writes (and reads) while travelling, during still moments at home in England and France, recalling a childhood in New Zealand and years living in Iran. Other times she can be found stitching, walking or on her yoga mat.

Danielle Hope is a widely published poet, a translator of Italian poetry and a doctor, originally from Lancashire, now living in London. She has 4 collections of poetry (all Rockingham Press), her latest, Mrs Uomo’s Yearbook, charts struggles with life’s complexities, ridiculous and rickety. In PN Review Leah Fritz highlights her ability to use form or not, and concludes that Mrs Uomo’s Yearbook is an elegantly accomplished collection – one for the books. Penelope Shuttle says there’s a beautifully-steady and cleanly-stated respect for and questioning of life. Danielle also runs popular poetry workshops and is judge for the Torbay Poetry Competition in 2018. www.daniellehope.org

Sarah James is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and editor. Her latest poetry collection is plenty-fish from Nine Arches Press and a pamphlet How to Grow Matches is forthcoming from Against The Grain Press in spring 2018 . Winner of the Overton Poetry Prize 2015, her website is at www.sarah-james.co.uk and she runs the poetry and flash fiction imprint, V. Press.

Phil Kirby spent most of his working life as an English teacher. His first collection, Watermarks (Arrowhead) is ‘sold out’, though the last few copies are available by contacting him. His new collection, The Third History has just been published by Lapwing Publications.

John Kitchen is based in Leicester. He writes plays and poems. The latter have been published in HCE, IS &T, From Dusk to Dawn and others. He has been read on Radio 3 by Imogen Stubbs.

Richard Lewis is a writer from Swansea currently living and working in Cardiff. He won 2nd prize in the 2015 Terry Hetherington Young Writers Award, and is currently working on completion of his first poetry collection.

Thomas McColl lives in London, and his poems have been published in magazines such as Envoi, Iota, Fat Damsel, Prole and Ink, Sweat and Tears,and in anthologies by Hearing Eye, Flarestack, Eyewear and Shoestring Press. His first full collection of poetry and flash fiction, entitled Being With Me Will Help You Learn, is out now with Listen Softly London Press.

Caroline Maldonado is a poet and translator. Her published work has appeared in Shearsman, The Long Poem Magazine, Tears in the Fence, Poetry Salzburg Review amongst other magazines and anthologies. Publications include Your call keeps us awake, a co-translation with Allen Prowle from Italian of poems by Rocco Scotellaro (Smokestack Books 2013), What they say in Avenale (Indigo Dreams Publishing 2014) and forthcoming Isabella (Smokestack Books 2019)

Alwyn Marriage’s ten books include poetry, non-fiction and, recently, a novel (Rapeseed). She’s widely represented in magazines, anthologies and on-line and gives readings internationally. Formerly a university philosophy lecturer, Director of two international NGOs and a Rockefeller Scholar, she’s currently Managing Editor of Oversteps Books and a research fellow at Surrey University. www.marriages.me.uk/alwyn

Mary Michaels has lived most of her life in London. Her work has appeared in a wide range of magazines and her collection The Shape of the Rock was selected for the ‘Alternative Next Generation’ list. Her most recent poetry pamphlet is Caret Mark, (Hearing Eye) following two prose collections, Squint and My Life in Films. She is also widely known for her reviews and articles on contemporary poets.

Ray Miller describes himself as a Socialist, Aston Villa supporter, faithful husband for 37 years. Life’s been a disappointment.

Kate Noakes’ most recent collection is Paris, Stage Left (Eyewear, 2017). Her next The Filthy Quiet is due from Parthian later this year. She was elected to the Welsh Academy of Letters in 2011 and her website (boomslangpoetry.blogspot.com) is archived by the National Library of Wales. She lives in London.

Keith Nunes is a Citizen of the World who is spending his life writing about everything imaginable with unbounded enthusiasm. Sometimes he’s published, sometimes he has to ride the ‘no thanks’ and scribble on.

William Oxley was born in Manchester. His poems have been published in magazines and journals as diverse as The New York Times, The Observer, The Spectator, The Independent, Agenda, Acumen, The London Magazine and Poetry Ireland Review. A study of his poetry, The Romantic Imagination appeared in 2005 from Poetry Salzburg. His most recent volumes are ISCA – Exeter Moments (Ember Press 2013) and Poems from the Divan of Hafez (translated from the Persian with Parvin Loloi)(Acumen Publications, 2013). His Collected and New Poems came from Rockingham Press in 2014, and Walking Sequence & Other Poems (Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2015). He has given readings throughout the UK, as well as abroad in Nepal, Antibes and elsewhere.

Stuart Pickford works as a teacher in a comprehensive school in Harrogate. His latest book is Swimming with Jellyfish published last year by smith/doorstop.

Myra Schneider’s most recent collection is The Door to Colour (Enitharmon 2014) . Her pamphlet, Persephone in Finsbury Park, came out in 2016 from Second Light Publications. A new collection is due in the autumn from Ward Wood publishing. Other publications include books about personal writing and fiction for young people. She is consultant to the Second Light Network and a Poetry School tutor in London

Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three books of poetry. His most recent collection is This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury, 2015). A Best of the Net 2017 nominee, his poems are in venues around the world: Mad Swirl, The Stray Branch, Ann Arbor Review, Empty Mirror, First Literary Review-East, Right Hand Pointing, Grey Sparrow Journal, The Synesthesia Anthology: 2013-2017, Rasputin: A Poetry Thread Anthology, Scarlet Leaf Review, Peeking Cat Anthology 2017, Communicators League, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.

Lauren J Smith is a 24-year-old from Christchurch, New Zealand. Her recent poetry publications can be found in Takahe magazine (Issue 91, 2017) and NZMSJ (Issue 25, 2017). In addition to writing poetry, she is studying to be a doctor at the University of Otago.

Jock Stein is a piper and preacher from East Lothian. He brings to his poetry experience of the Sheffield steel industry, life in East Africa, directing a conference centre, a sabbatical in Hungary, and the politics of Scotland today. He writes poetry in many styles, serious and quirky.

Heidi Williamson is a poetry surgeon for The Poetry Society and mentors poets by Skype worldwide for The Writing Coach and The Poetry School. The Print Museum (Bloodaxe) won the 2016 East Anglian Book Award for Poetry. Electric Shadow (Bloodaxe,2011) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation & shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre rize. www.heidiwilliamsonpoet.com

Jim C Wilson lives in Gullane, East Lothian. His writing has been widely published for 35 years. He has been Writer in Residence for Stirling District and a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Napier University and Edinburgh University. He has taught his Poetry in Practice sessions at Edinburgh University since 1994. His latest poetry collection is Come Close and Listen (Greenwich Exchange). More information at www.jimcwilson.com

Back to poet list…

By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • new poetry, poetry, year 2018 3 • Tags: Michael Bartholomew-Biggs, poetry

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